S3 E54: 🙃 Money Pet Peeves With Linda Grizely
This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute mental health, financial, tax, or legal advice.
Episode Summary
On the first-ever pet peeve session of the Money Healing Club podcast, Rachel sits down with certified financial planner Linda Grizely, creator of the Me Money method, to unpack the mainstream rules that sound like gospel but fall apart on real humans: wants versus needs, the 30% rent rule, strict budgets, and the pressure to be completely debt free.
💬 "The goal should not be zero debt. The goal should be to have a plan that may include debt that gets you where you want to be." — Linda Grizely
Key Takeaways:
Why wants versus needs is never one size fits all
The Me Money method: budgeting for your wants as permission, not punishment
Linda's five money personalities, and why strict budgets only work for one of them
Why debt is a morally neutral tool, not a moral failing
⏰ Episode Breakdown
06:30 | Where the millennial inheritance community came from. How one sarcastic video about a box of "Oneida crap" turned into a movement.
23:00 | Why value is completely subjective. From the Beanie Baby crash to a mother's beloved books.
26:15 | The one question to ask about any inherited object. Moving from someone else's sentiment to your own sense of utility.
37:00 | Two-pronged advice. One message for the elders holding the collection, one for the kids who will manage it.
About Linda Grizely: Linda is a certified financial planner, financial wellness speaker, and host of the Real Money Real Life podcast. As the creator of the Me Money method, she helps people cut through the shame and stress around money and make financial decisions that feel human, practical, and judgment free.
🔗 Resources mentioned
Linda's money personality quiz, on lindagriz.com
The Me Money method
The history of the 30% housing rule, from Shelterforce: "In Defense of the 30 Percent of Income to Housing Affordability Rule, In Some Cases" - https://shelterforce.org/2017/04/25/defense-30-percent-standard-cases/
HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired
Rachel's exercise on listing your debts and acknowledging how debt has helped you
💌 Connect with Linda Grizely
Website: https://www.lindagriz.com/
Podcast: Real Money Real Life
🎙️ Join the Conversation
Click on the big orange button on our site right from your phone or browser and tell me: what's a piece of money advice that never worked for you? https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/podcast
💝 Support the Podcast
Help keep the Money Healing Club podcast going! If this show has helped you feel less alone or more grounded with money, please consider contributing here: https://buy.stripe.com/4gMdRb3Nc9ZKfpM2MQd7q0b
🎧 Your next listen:
S2 E37: 💳 Debt-Free Isn't the Answer, with Haley and Justin Brown-Woods of The Price of Avocado Toast, for the full deep dive on why paying off debt faster isn't always the goal. https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/podcast/s2e37
🎙️We're a proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective where creators like me are uplifting diverse voices and driving meaningful change.
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Linda Grizely (00:00)
I have another pet peeve.
How about being completely debt free?
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (00:04)
my god, thank you.
Rachel Duncan (00:05)
you
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (00:09)
Welcome to the Money Healing Club Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Duncan. I'm a certified financial therapist and art therapist, and you've come to the softest place to land in personal finance. Just a reminder: this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for mental health, legal, financial, or tax advising. Please be sure to get your own one-on-one help with a credentialed professional.
A lot of pet peeves when it comes to some of the louder voices out there about personal finance.
And it's actually a motivating thing in my work to just promote some antidotes to the restrictive and out-of-date quote rules there are about personal finance. Because let's just say there's there's some less than helpful advice out there, or more accurately, there's advice out there that might work for a few, but cannot and should not be generalized to all of us.
And so I invited a financial expert on the podcast for this talk, my first ever pet peeve session on the podcast. First of many. I loved talking with inventing with Linda Grizely and I hope it can help dispel some money myths or just bad advice that you've heard. Linda Grizely is a certified financial planner, financial wellness speaker, personal finance educator, and host of the Real Money Real Life podcast. She's known for changing the way people think about money.
Money by addressing the human side of financial decisions, the stress, the shame, avoidance, the real life pressures that often keep people stuck. As the creator of the Me Money method, Linda helps people move toward clarity, confidence, and action with money in a way that feels human, practical, and underline, underlying judgment free.
I love talking with Linda about our top pet peeves, about common personal financial advice out there. For example, the wants versus needs fallacy, the 30% rent fallacy, the strict budget fallacy, and the overfocus on debt fallacy. Do you have a financial pet peeve? Email it over to me and let me know, and maybe I'll add it to another pet peeve episode. I'd love that. What's some advice that seemed like, I don't know, that seemed like canon?
but just didn't work for you. What's some common money advice out there that you have found just out of touch or really doesn't work for you? I'd love to hear it and feature it on an upcoming episode.
So let's talk about what we don't usually say when we talk about misguided financial advice with Linda Grizely
Rachel Duncan (02:36)
you
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (02:39)
Welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast, Linda. I'm so glad you're here.
Linda Grizely (02:43)
Thanks for having me, Rachel. I love the name Money Healing.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (02:47)
What we're here for. know you and I are aligned on a lot of things. And I think in this episode, we're we're gonna have it's the pet peeve episode, everyone. Linda and I, you know, we connected instantly on the stuff that drives us crazy about mainstream advice and how this really shows up for our clients and how we see like.
How our individual work with clients is so different than what mainstream advice says. So we've got some pet peeves that we are going to unpack for you all. So the first one, the one that I think brought us together is well, you just need to separate your wants from your needs and not buy your wants and just focus on your needs or some some version of that, the wants versus needs. Tell me why that is a pet peeve of yours.
Linda Grizely (03:33)
Well, it's a pet peeve because it's so restrictive and it doesn't it doesn't treat the person, right? We're talking about financial wellness, money healing. And if you're just being completely restrictive and not doing anything that you wanna do and just doing everything that you need to do, what a miserable life that would be.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (03:57)
Exactly. And I was thinking about I just read something so good on Substack about how stress is so expensive. And how like if we're in a place where you're not honoring any of your wants, like your stress is going to build. And guess what? It's going to break through as impulse spending. It's going to, you know, a stressful situation then sells you the cure. And in this way, when you're only like, I'm can only buy what I need and never anything that I want, that can raise your stress and then actually end up in more spending sometimes.
Linda Grizely (04:24)
Yeah, absolutely. And it leads to it leads to shame because you didn't do it. You failed because you bought something for yourself that you shouldn't have done. So you're you're getting something that you want because it makes you feel good and you want to feel good and then you do it. And then there's that buyer's remorse because now you feel bad because you knew you shouldn't do it. And it's just a big, big cycle. This is why it's a pet peeve.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (04:49)
You know, another thing is like my wants versus needs are totally different from yours. I think that's
the other thing is like I've also seen out there like, well, you know, 50% should be on needs and 30% on wants, or some pie graph, which is also just BS. Like those numbers don't come from anywhere that may have worked for one person, but that is not applicable to everybody. And what is a need and a want? You know, someone say with chronic health issues.
You know, massages are a need and not a want. And so that's not a useful you know, list of things like, these are extras when they might not be for somebody else.
Linda Grizely (05:25)
Right. And that's so I have my me money method. And really all the me money method is is budgeting for your wants, setting aside an amount that you're allowed to spend on your wants. And I know budgeting sounds horrible, but here's the thing: if you're a person who feels guilty and has and is in that cycle of shame when you spend money on yourself, it's giving you permission. So it's actually freeing. So it sounds like it's a a horrible thing, but it's actually freeing because it's giving you permission. And
this is a great thing with couples too, because now I can use shoes an example because now the guys buy the the sneakers, you know, and the women buy the heels. So or that could be whatever. I'm being kind of gender stereotypical there, but but the idea is is that shoes are are across all all genders now where people can be into shoes. So I can use that as a good example. The idea being like, you know, there's
a a famous money person out there who very speaks about shame a lot. Can you afford this? And someone
called in, and someone called in saying, Can I buy the can I buy these heels? I have two things coming up that I could wear it for. My husband says, No, can I afford it? And the the this person says, No, you can't afford it, right? And I'm sitting there thinking, Yes, you can, you can afford this. Because if you have a set aside money amount to spend on yourself.
And you want to save up that money every month while you're paying yourself it and not buy anything else so that you can get that one thing you really want, you can do it. You can afford it because you're gonna have to say no to a bunch of other things to get there, but you can do it if that's what you really want. So it could be this pair of sneakers, it could be the pair of heels. And then the other part of that is in a relationship, then you have you know that nobody's spending more than the other or less than the other.
They might be saving their part, but it's still theirs. And so it's always set aside for you. And so your spouse or your significant other can't come through and say, you know, I can't believe you spent that much money on shoes. Well, so what? Because we have the same amount of money. You're spending it on whatever you want, and I'm spending it on whatever I want. It doesn't matter anymore. So there's a lot
of different things with the wants and needs. When you actually give yourself permission for the wants, that it that it helps with.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (07:38)
Totally. And I I like this idea with couples too. It's the no questions asked. Like you could
spend it all on soda, like whatever. we need
that no questions asked aspect. And whether or not we're in a partnership, I think we need a little bit of no questions asked. I think also like where the wants are are often like where values lie, you know, maybe.
Linda Grizely (07:57)
Absolutely.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (07:58)
Absolutely, you know. I've talked with folks like, well, I guess I I don't really I could work out with YouTube. I don't need to join the gym.
Or I could cut out my guitar lessons or you know what I mean? And I'm like, whoa, hang on a second. You know, those things for me actually feel like pretty essential or my guess, you know, I would explore that, especially when something relates to another aspect of health, creativity, social, you know, physical health. Like these things are important technically, sure. Could you eliminate from the budget? Yes. Do you want to play with that? Fine.
Do you wanna look at all their alternatives? Fine, like I downgraded my gym membership. And that's like, hey, this isn't all or nothing. I was able to just like find another mode that saved me money and related more to how I was using it. Like sometimes there's that. But I think so often what we consider extras, like, buying fresh cut flowers. Hey, you know, I want I want to look at that. Would you really be sad if you didn't have fresh cut flowers? Like, is this a really important thing for you? Could we honor that and reverse engineer around that? Like
If having fresh cut flowers every week is a real non-negotiable for you, you are really attached to that, that feels really good. Let's look at the rest of the spending plan. Cause now we know what we're going towards. We know that that's
important. And that can feel, I think, so gratifying. Be like, this is this is a me thing. And I'm I value it. I I really prioritize it, even if for other people it's not.
Linda Grizely (09:22)
Yeah. Yeah. I you hear, you know, the cut the latte talk, right,
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (09:26)
God, that's the other one, Linda.
Linda Grizely (09:28)
that's another pet peeve. If if the latte is the one thing you're doing for self-care, my goodness, do not cut it.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (09:36)
Yeah. I
mean, yeah, exactly. Like I've I've talked with with clients that, you know, have one well one particular thing, like maybe books or clothing and stuff like that. But it's so much more than just the thing. It's I go into the shop and they know me, or they know my regular drink, or I cook for my family all day long. Like I want someone to make something for me for once. Like there are layers of depth, I think, often going on with our spending that's worth looking at. Now, if someone's like, it truly it's just become a habit, I would like to cut it out.
I'm all for an experiment. That's great. But to realize like there's a lot probably going on with these habits that, like, now I realize, now I don't leave the house. so going to get coffee was the only way you were leaving the house.
That feels more important or that was serving other purposes, you know, and let's look at that.
Linda Grizely (10:20)
Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (10:22)
Yeah, that's okay. Lattes. Let's let's sidebar into that because there is even a book called The Latte Factor.
And I do feel like it's it's for me it distinguishes this sort of like generational divide. It's such boomer advice for, you know, folks who are younger that like, it's because you're getting lattes. So what do you think about like the latte effect and how do you work with that with your clients?
Linda Grizely (10:44)
Well, so everybody is so uniquely different. So the latte effect can be a problem. It can be a problem if they just aren't understanding the value of money and they're just out spending and doing other things. And it's reflective of an overall mindset and behavior around money, rather than just the idea that like I stop and get the latte because it's the only time of the day that I actually do something for myself. Right. It's a completely separate
thing.
So I think that the latte factor was originally talking about people that didn't understand the value of money and were just out and spending a bunch of money and that if they cut this out, they wouldn't be ha struggling like they are. And and there is some truth to it. So I want to say that there is truth to it, but you have to put it in perspective to each individual person's situation. You can't just say blanket overall, you know, nobody should be buying lattes.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (11:41)
Yeah. And I appreciate what you brought up with the shoes, that there is often a gendered component, right? Like, you know, often women are stereotyped as, you know, as the shoppers and buying frivolous things, but men buy gear. That's come up a lot with like the men and women that I work with. Well, like it's not impulse money because it's equipment, it's gear. I'm like, well, let's take a look at this, you know. And then like
there can be this different look. well, mine are sneakers, hers are heels.
And this sort of value about like what is more utilitarian. And then we get into this whole, it's a need and not a want. And I think that
can be interesting. And I think sometimes like the going out and the getting drinks is sometimes a more woman gendered like I think stereotype. But men may have their own thing. Like there's actually been stuff coming out lately about gambling with young men, online gambling being
a huge and very gendered
spending risk. I want to go on to our next one. You wrote a great
Linda Grizely (12:37)
Definitely.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (12:40)
email recently. That's why I was like, Linda, I can't wait to talk about this.
And I've heard this in many places. You should spend 30% of your income on housing, rent slash mortgage. How do you respond to that?
Linda Grizely (12:52)
Yeah. Okay.
So the reason it was in my newsletter is because a person who writes articles reached out to me and wanted me to contribute a quote to an article. So I always put the whenever I contribute a quote and my article's the article's published and I'm in it, I always put it my newsletter. So I'm glad that it it rang a bell with you because what I basically said was you cannot give an overall advice number like that and expect it to work for every single person.
Because I might have or a person might have a lot of other responsibilities. They might have five children. They might have kids in college. They might have 10 dogs that they're taking care of. It could be anything, other responsibilities, whatever they are, right? That is going to cut into the amount that they can spend on housing. So saying 30% of your income, it might be a
standard benchmark, but it's not one size fits all advice. Nothing is one size fits all advice. I'm just going to say that. Nothing is one size fits all advice. Everything is going to be so unique to the individuals involved. But a person who is single and, you know, has their one income coming in and doesn't have a lot of other responsibilities, 30% is probably a good benchmark to go by because they don't have a lot of other things to to worry about.
They might even be able to do more than 30%, depending on their income and their their lifestyle, right? So I think that it might be a place to start, but it's never a rule that should be followed exactly.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (14:29)
I totally agree. And I remember hearing, I'm just remembering this now on a podcast, and I'll I'll find this resource that this whole 30% thing came from one particular housing study in one particular county like 25, 30 years ago. Like, and then it got, it blew up as like this is how it should be. And it was like the most narrow of narrow like recommendations from a very specific thing, also outdated. And I remember back 20 years ago or so, I had I was looking for an apartment.
And I just I like I just left college and I had my first you know full-time job and I would talk to a leasing agent and and it was interesting because you know I had I think I had heard that 30% is like a maximum. And then he converted it into you should spend 30%. I was like, what if I wanna spend 25 or 20%? You know, because it at the time like rents were relatively cheap. Like I actually want to spend the least amount possible. And it was this interesting dialogue.
with I should spend thirty percent. Like it was more like the minimum instead of the maximum. And I just
like ever since then, like that is and then I did not work with that agent and I found a place that was twenty percent of my income, folks. Granted, this is 2005, so
that was more possible. But you know, I think it's also like, is this a minimum or a maximum? Like where are we looking at there? And yeah, it's so variable where you're living, the place you're living, the kind of income you have, and yeah, just what you're comparing that to.
Linda Grizely (15:56)
Right. And wants versus needs can come right into that too. Wants versus
needs, because you might need if you, you know, places for all of your children to sleep or all of your or a place for all of your pets to to be in the right type of home. You might need that. But then also you might want to live in a specific area or want to have, you know, a a certain size yard or be on a certain floor of a building or whatever that is, which is wants and which is needs.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (16:25)
And I've also worked with some clients where, like, yes, like maybe their rent is a higher proportion because what they don't have a car, like because they're
living in city, right? It's just like like let's look at the whole picture here, right? They're saving on transportation. It's really worth it for them logistically, personally, values aligned to like being an urban place, right? So like all of these things, it's like taking this holistic look at just how all of this works out. And housing is of course a major expense, and that's
probably real for everybody. But this like certain pie chart proportion that it's supposed to be, yeah, it just doesn't pan out. Okay, which leads us to another pet peeve, which is just make a budget and stick to it.
Linda Grizely (17:08)
Ha ha.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (17:08)
Why doesn't that work? Why doesn't that work, Linda? We all want it to work, but it doesn't. Why doesn't that work?
Linda Grizely (17:16)
Well, first of all, well this the word budget. I already said it before. It's a horrible word. Every you hear it
and everybody's like, my gosh, that sounds awful. It's restrictive. Who would want to do that? So I mean, all already when you say the word budget, people are are against it. But then there's the people who are like, no, I do the zero budgeting, which zero budgeting is like you make sure that every single dollar ha is accounted for. And they love that, right? Well, here's the thing. There's different money personalities. And one of them I
made up my own names for money personalities. You can look them up. They're all different things. I didn't, you know, identify that there are money personalities, but I named them myself the ones that I use from based on my work that I did. So a security seeker is someone who would love the zero budgeting. They want every penny accounted for because they want to know where everything's going. A security seeker will absolutely love to be on a budget because they want to know. They want to know they're okay. They want to know where everything's going, right?
And so I have four other money personalities. I have a saver who might who might be able to do a zero-based budget. Then I have an avoider who's absolutely not going to ever look at that, even if they put it together once, if they, if they get enough energy to put it together, it's going to stress them out and they're never going to look at it again. And then a spender who's just going to feel awful every time they look at that budget because they love to spend money. And then a risk taker who's going to be like, screw that.
I just wanna go do the big things and I don't care. I just wanna live my life, right? So out of five money personalities, there's one that a strict zero based budget will work for, one that it might work for, and then the other three, no, not happening.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (18:56)
And I'll just say my guess is the other three are the ones listening to this podcast right now. So
just know that you all are heard here. And can we sidebar real quick, how
Linda Grizely (19:05)
Yeah.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (19:05)
can someone take this quiz? 'Cause we all love a personality type.
Linda Grizely (19:09)
absolutely. They can take it on my website, lindagriz.com L I N D A G R I Z dot com. And it there's a link right at the top that just says, I think it's at the top, it says take a money personality quiz. Otherwise it's on my resources page where there's a bunch of other free stuff you can do too.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (19:25)
Great. I'll link to all that in the show notes. Just want to say while you're listening, you can you can take your little quiz and see see where
you're at. I love that because I I see this too. I see, yeah, there's certain money behaviors and habits that a very small slice of the population do, and then somehow that becomes like this standard or this ideal that the rest of us feel imperfect with because we can't reach that. And I will say also from like,
financial therapy standpoint, one of the problematic money scripts is money hoarding. And what's tough about people who hoard money is they quote, look good with money. They look like they're doing the right thing by hoarding it. But it actually is its own pain. It's its own difficulty and rigidity. And those folks are the hardest to help. They're they because they don't get help, you know? And
And it but it's their own, it's their own kind of struggle. So even like the security seeker, they have their own, you know, it doesn't mean they're it everything is beautiful and balanced and they're totally happy with it. There could be quite a bit of stress and anxiety that goes along with that because you could make the most beautiful budget in the world and stick to it, and then life is gonna life. And like where can there be, you know, how does this person respond to flexibility and change? So there's another
end of the spectrum. And I think
lot of my clients say like, I've got, you know, the so and so in my family and they're perfect with money. And then my client has been the one compared to them. That often is the case. I'm like, well, you know what? They might look like they're good with money, but I they have their own journey. They do have
their own journey. It might be different from yours. But it let's not make assumptions about that.
Linda Grizely (21:07)
Absolutely. Okay, so the me money method, setting aside an amount to spend on your wants, right? Or
your discretionary items for the security seeker, the person who's a money hoarder, which sometimes they can be the same, sometimes they're not. I don't want to you to think that that a security seeker is always a money hoarder, but those types of personalities, they need a line item that says this is the amount I'm allowed to spend on myself. They need permission to spend the money. so
By by doing a budget that's just the discretionary or the wants only, the other ones who don't succeed, or I shouldn't say don't, are are less likely to succeed with a strict budget, doing that budgeting is is freeing. It helps them make better choices, it helps them place value, like you said before, values-based. You know, if I say yes to this now, I'm gonna say no to this something later.
If I say no now, I can say yes to something later. So maybe I don't really value this this much. It it all it does is it adds a container, right? So it it it can be a little bit restrictive, but it just makes you stop and think and make better choices.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (22:19)
Gotcha. And it's in in that like I mean, I know we were use the word allowance like, you know, when you're a kid. It's an interesting word, isn't it? Like allowance. But actually like the word allow is in there. And
that like this is a non-judgmental and even for someone who is in that more security seeking place, like the permission to play a little could be a
really growth, beautiful growth edge for them.
Linda Grizely (22:44)
Absolutely. So the me money method actually came about because I put my husband on a budget and he said, great, you're giving me an allowance and I said, Well, chores come with an allowance. So do you want it to be an allowance or do you want it to be a budget?
Ha ha
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (23:04)
How did that work out? How did that I'm curious, how'd that go?
Linda Grizely (23:06)
well, and
that it worked out so well that I named it well after I started put after I had started having clients do it and I was like, wow, this works with with virtually everyone. It just works so well. That's when I put a name to it and started calling it the me money method. And really just spreading the word about it because it's such a simple thing. I mean, I give away the you know the method, I tell everybody what it is. I'm like, just start doing it. it's so
Just such a mindset shift in the way that all the different personalities think about money and and it allows them to actually have thoughts about money if they're avoiders like that. They, you know, they're like, okay, I'm paying at least attention to this. Because a lot of times all the other stuff, unless you really have a lifestyle problem where you're living beyond your means, the other stuff is all just responsibilities anyway.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (23:55)
What do you mean is all responsibilities? What do you mean?
Linda Grizely (23:58)
So when you have, so when you look at your cash flow, which is really sort of budgeting, cash flow is what's coming in and what's going out, and then also what you're saving, right? And so in a perfect world, you have that zero-based, meaning that both everything aligns. What's coming in matches everything that's going out and saving, and there's nothing left over. But in real life, there's usually this gray area. And the gray area is like the fog zone, right? It's where you have no idea where your money's going.
But usually that is the wants. That's the discretionary stuff. That is not like a regular bill that comes in. It's the impulse buys, it's the lattes, it's the shoes, it's the whatever your thing is, right? It's those extras. It's the extra part of, you know, the add on to the gym membership that you think, it's just this much, it's not a big deal. But over time, all these little things add up and that's where it just disappears to. so that is the idea behind that.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (24:50)
that's great about
kind of like, yeah, what's what is the sort of and I agree. I think it's this in-between stuff. Like how often people sit down, they even even a money avoider usually knows what their rent is, right? As they go through all the regular
bills. That's great. That's a big chunk of your expenses. It's like the regular bills, the stuff that's coming out every month. And then it's like and then everything else. I like how you call it the fog zone. That's definitely my experience with folks of like, it's sort of the day-to-day discretionary,
you know, say, well, what are we spending on groceries? I have no idea. Right. Or, you know, takeout, things like that, because it's sort of like this little bit all over the place and it's like super
scattered. So how do you help people? Let's get into the fog zone a little bit. Like, how does someone come out of that fog? How does someone like without becoming a whole different personality type? Without like becoming that security seeker if that's just not who they are. How do you help someone come out of that fog zone so they
feel better about where their money's going.
Linda Grizely (25:50)
Couple of things. First of all, paying attention to your cash flow, right? So cash flow, like I already explained, come what's coming in, what's going out, and what you're saving is included in there. So if you think of cash flow, it's like your dashboard of your car, right? Now you don't need to understand how the whole car works. All you need to know is what's in front of you on the dashboard. So if you think of like you have your speedometer, how fast you're going, right? Your gas gauge, you know, are you gonna run out of gas? And then your
temperature gauge, are you going to overheat, right? So that's really all you need to know. Because if you're going too fast, you're going to get pulled over and you're going to give get a ticket. If you're going to, if you're spending too much, you're going to run out of gas and you're not going to be able to make it to the gas station because you're not paying attention. And if you're about to overheat, you want to know the warning light's going off and you want to know that you're about to overheat so that you can, you know, take measures to cool it down before you actually have a bigger problem.
So if you think about it that way, that's what looking at cash flow is. It's just understanding what's coming in, what's going out, and where you're saving. So saving, spending, income, all of that. And that's really it. So just understanding that. The other thing though, is paying attention to emotions around money. So even when I just say the word money, most people have an immediate emotion. And that emotion can change from the morning to the evening, depending on what happened during that day.
It can be like excitement in the morning, like, woohoo, I'm gonna go make a bunch of money today. And it might be defeat at the end of the day. Like, I didn't get that sale. And I'm just, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my bills. And you know, so it could be a completely different emotion at any given point in time, but there's always emotion behind it. So just remember that money is emotion first. And we know this, most of us, because we know what it feels like when we hit, you know, buy now or we have that impulse buy or we go buy the thing. Like you get, you know, a a happy feeling. And that
That makes you feel happy. But then sometimes later you might be like, gosh, I should have done that. So then you feel bad about the same thing that made you happy. Like there's just so many emotions. So the point is pay attention to cash flow and pay attention to your emotions and start understanding behaviors behind how you interact with money.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (28:03)
And in this way, I think it's it's the noticing. And I think sometimes people may feel that I'm giving like non-advice or I feel like I need something specific. And like, you know what? Mindfulness and just noticing is gonna do so much more for your money, your like your financial wellness, than you know, making a budget and stick to it. It's like a tiny slice of the pie. But like just noticing, man, like, I was really sleepy and I, you know, ended up buying a bunch of stuff.
online. did it have to do with feeling sleepy? Right. And we're backing and like, I'm noticing that. Okay, when I'm sleepy, I need to put my phone in the other room. You know, it's like, it's just this sort of knowing yourself and learning about yourself. Hey, I know when I've had a stressful day, this tends to happen. And then on the opposite side, when I've made like an aligned money decision or I had a pause that I felt really good about, what else was going on? I had had lunch.
You know, I had been feeling I'd been doing some good self-care and look at this. I feel like I trust myself more with money when I'm in that place. And so that that's a big thing I teach of like it's what we call the window of regulation. Like when you're in the window and when you're not in the window. And it's all fine. No one is perfectly regulated all the time or in the middle regulated. There's just different states of regulation. And the noticing is so much more important than
like a quote accountability or restricting yourself. And maybe we just need better words for it because it feels like, I'm not doing the thing, but like noticing it, noticing for yourself, noticing it with others, a journaling practice. Like, why are we not talking more about journaling practices when it comes to budgeting? Because I think we can get a lot more out of it when we're just allowing ourselves to like, yes, I have feelings about that. I regret that I didn't research more about that purchase. Like
I would encourage anyone who has a journaling practice to bring money into that. Like, let's use the tools that's already working for you, especially if you're like a self-aware person, which a lot of my listeners are. let's bring that in because yes, your emotional reaction to money and about money is really the driving thing. Like, I think it's like 80 to 90% of our financial decisions are emotionally driven. That's across the board, guys.
So let's honor that.
Linda Grizely (30:18)
Definitely. And I love that you brought up the the regulation. And I I like to use an example when I'm trying to explain that to people about you know, having like put your phone in the other room. And I always say, you know when you what happens when you go to the grocery store when you're hungry? What happens? And this I'm not even talking about money right now, even though money is a part of that too. But like you end up buying all these other things that you wouldn't have bought because your hunger is not regulated when you go to the grocery store.
So I like to use that as an example 'cause almost everybody gets that one.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (30:49)
Yeah. And there's the a beautiful acronym HALT. I'll I'll look who came up with it, but hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Am I hungry, angry, lonely, tired? All of these places it's just a cue to I need to go care for myself, try to not make any financial decisions, you know, not make any other like big life decisions when those four things are going on. and yeah, because and and money could be in the room with that because money just touches everything. Yeah. We have so many pet peeves. It's that's so good.
I feel like I these are the big ones. you know what, Linda? I think of one last pet peeve I think so many people focus on expenses, and it's there. Not that it's not important, but so often like we have an income problem, not an expense problem. And sometimes it's backing up to look at that. And I'm wondering do you have those conversations with with folks about the other the other parts of our financial wellness? which is like,
includes borrowing and income, but we come in like so focused on the expenses. How do you how do you take that?
Linda Grizely (31:53)
Again, it's unique for every individual, but we look at expenses first because that's the easiest thing to change. It's a lot harder to change your income. But sometimes I definitely have conversations with people telling them like you're not charging enough. Like for make solopreneurs or entrepreneurs, like you're not charging enough, or even people that have W-2 jobs, you know, you deserve more than this.
you've been at this company, you're waiting for promotion. Maybe it's time to look elsewhere, you know, and and maybe it's time to think about s leveling up. And and I talk to people too who who don't think that they are, you know, they have they have that idea that they're not worthy of that next position. Like, well, I don't have this yet or I don't have that yet. But really you've done it all already. You may not have the thing that it says you have to have, but go for it.
So I have lots of conversations about income in that sense too. But you know, I start with we start with when we look at cash flow, we start thinking of like expenses, like with what's coming in, what's going out. And then there a lot of times can be like a lifestyle conversation. You know, if they are not living within their means, it's like your income is not supporting your lifestyle. So you either need to change your lifestyle or you need to change your income. Which one do you want to do? Or maybe it's both.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (33:09)
Maybe it's both. Absolutely.
And then yeah, we're bringing values into that conversation too. And I think sometimes also we get anchor points of like, well, I make X amount. That should be enough. Like, yeah, maybe 20 years ago. You know, sometimes there's just some slight updating, or yes, but not living in the city where you're living. You know, there can be some kind of truth-telling with that. And yeah, that's a slower, longer process, but quite often such an important part.
We don't talk about enough. it's like, well, I'm fully employed. I should make this work. And just like you said, yeah, that depends. That depends a lot. Could work for a single person with no kids. If
you if you're not, you have you have a different situation. That truly might not be enough. And to like make this work or make this lifestyle work the way you want it to, we're gonna need to push that forward. the the income side of the, I don't know, the lever. I just feel like we got all these levers. I love your your analogy of the dashboard, and it's like,
Yeah, and you've got some different levers to adjust things. The mo the closest at hand is expenses. That is something we can start changing right away. But backing up and looking at the bigger picture,
there are there are other parts of the story.
Linda Grizely (34:14)
Absolutely.
I don't know if we have time, but I have another pet peeve. Okay.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (34:17)
Do it yes.
Linda Grizely (34:19)
How about being completely debt free?
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (34:22)
my god, thank you.
Yes. How did we not talk about and also you know who's feelings about debt. Okay, talk to me. Should the goal
be zero debt?
Linda Grizely (34:35)
The goal should not be zero debt. The goal should be to have a plan that may include debt that gets you where you want to be.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (34:45)
Yeah. Debt is a tool. That's why I tell people debt is morally neutral,
even though it has a lot of weight to it. It is a tool. I mean businesses use debt. Like there's lots of uses for debt.
Linda Grizely (34:57)
Yeah. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who had mortgages or still at the time had mortgages that were like at 2.5% and were making extra payments on their mortgage to pay it down. And every one of them I said, take that money. And at the time, the high yield savings accounts were at like four and a half percent interest. Take that money, put it into a high yield savings account, label it the
Mortgage payoff account and put it there instead. Stop putting it towards your house. Put it there instead. Let it compound, let it grow more. And then if for some reason you need to pay off your house, the money's all there. You can just take the money out of that account and pay it towards the house. But you're gonna be better off in the long run if you're putting in this other account than if you're paying it towards your house.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (35:48)
Totally. I think similar thing with student loans, where some folks just feel you know, really righteously angry about it and just like the burden of it and wanting to pay it off really quickly. Now, depending, you know, there's a whole range of rates for student loans where sometimes that might make sense to pay them a little more aggressively, but like, okay, you have a federally backed subsidized loan that's very steady. And like we to back up and look at the whole picture. You know, when you look at say credit card debt.
versus student loan debt. Even if the student loan debt makes you super angry, we need to back up and look at like the the priorities of paying these down and reasonably paying them down. I you know what I find is like I think debt creates this vortex where I just need to throw if I have any extra money, I'm gonna throw it towards the debt because that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to not have any debt. And here here's what I advocate for. You you push back if you don't like this. But like
I want you to pay down your debt. Sure, we want to manage that within our cash flow, which is probably a smaller, regular payment that you don't think about. So it's not a vortex. Cause we want you thinking about the stuff you can control, like your, you know, lifestyle, income, stuff like that, and treat debt like a a bill that you're paying. So it's not and don't just shove money over there when there's ever extra, like we're we're taking a beat.
We're thinking about where else that money could go, so that it can be slowly paid off over time. Because that's the advantage of debt, is you get cash for a thing or whatever, and then you are able to pay it off slowly over time. That's the beauty of the debt tool, right?
Linda Grizely (37:30)
It is.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (37:31)
that's my that's the that's the my soapbox about debt.
Linda Grizely (37:34)
Yeah. And I want to say that I mean, there is bad debt. Credit card debt is bad debt. I would say the other debts, yes, use it like that. But credit card debt, get rid of it, pay it off as soon as you can, and don't go, don't ever carry a balance on your credit card. It it's awful. so we're talking about mainly we're talking about like car loans, mortgages, student loans, even personal loans sometimes for specific things or business loans. These are all things that that are helpful.
Whereas credit card debt is not necessarily, but sometimes it gets you through an emergency.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (38:06)
Yep. And sometimes it is in the place of an emergency fund. Or I use that.
And that's so often the case. That's, you know, I was between jobs or, you know, things like that where, you know, folks are carrying credit card debt because of an emergency. That's quite often the place. Sometimes also a mental health emergency, maybe not like in a mainstream view of emergencies, but like your own personal crisis. And
I think it's I actually have an exercise where we list our debts and we acknowledge the way that debt helped us in a certain time.
'Cause usually that was the case, you know, even
things like student loans and personal loans. and and including the credit card ones. And so I think I want to make sure that we're also saying that like the the reason that credit card debt is problematic is the high interest rate and the variable interest rate on it, right?
Linda Grizely (38:53)
Absolutely.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (38:54)
And if you have credit card debt, it's a you're still a good person. It's fine, right? You probably used it in a difficult time.
And we're still gonna prioritize that, but still within cash flow, because I do find also sometimes folks overpay into their credit card in ways they can't afford. So you gotta balance it with your cash
flow because then, look, then you have no cash and you're gonna take out more debt. So it need the payoff needs to be, you know, reduce the vortex, prioritize it.
But making sure that that's fitting just like a regular old bill into your life, not
something
Totally. There's a place for it. I'm so glad you brought that in because it like rounds
out the picture. Yes, that's a pet peeve too. Well, Linda, I love this. And I anyone listening, do you have a pet peeve? Is there some advice out there that just didn't work for you? Or, you know, something you hear like the finance bros talking about that like doesn't land for you? What did we miss? Please email me and I will I'll bring it into another episode. Maybe we'll bring Linda back and we'll complain about our pet peeves in a future episode.
So Linda, tell us how everyone can find you and get some more information about your
Linda Grizely (39:59)
sure. Of course. My website, lindagriz.com, L-I-N-D-A-G-R-I-Z.com. you can find me there. You can contact me there. My email, my phone number, all my socials are on there. if you're on LinkedIn, connect with me there. I'm always building that. I'm also on all the others, but not on it, not as much as I'm on LinkedIn.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (40:20)
Good to know. Yeah, your website's great. You've got tons of good resources. You can do the personality quiz and there's other fun downloads. So definitely I recommend everyone checking out Linda's stuff. Linda, you have your own podcast. Could you tell us about that?
Linda Grizely (40:31)
I do. It's called Real Money, Real Life. And I I talk about all things that go into financial planning or different aspects of money or investing and all whatever about personal finance. And then I bring in the ideas behind why people wouldn't do that or what the mind blocks are that we see with this particular thing so that we can start breaking down the human side of that that particular item that we're talking about that day.
Rachel Duncan CFT ATR-P (41:01)
Well, I recommend everyone check it out. Well, thank you so much, Linda. And if you think of any other pet peeves, send it my way. We'll unpack it again.
Linda Grizely (41:09)
Will do.
Rachel Duncan (41:10)
you
Rachel Duncan (41:13)
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Rachel Duncan (42:43)